Architecting HA Backups with ASR

[saguarovulture]

Hello all,

We currently use VBA in conjunction with Azure Site Recovery for Azure VM backups and DR respectively. In the case of a failing over to a secondary region, how can I ensure that my existing backups are available and that we can protect the failed over workloads? Had a few ideas and wanted to get some community feedback. One thing about the first two options that caused a little concern was this statement from the user guide, not sure about the "unpredictable data loss".

If the selected folder already contains backups, Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure will import the backup data to the configuration database. You can use this data to perform all disaster recovery operations described in section Performing Restore.

However, if the selected folder contains backups created by another backup appliance, Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure will still import the backup data to the configuration database but this may cause unpredictable data loss.

• replicate VBA appliance to DR region with primary backup storage replicated via GRS repository, add repository after failover

• have standby VBA appliance in DR region with GRS storage added after a failover

• utilize Veeam Backup and Replication for more granularity

Thanks in advance!

[nielsengelen]

Using VBR always allows you to recover from the blob container to any location you want. I'm not aware of testing done on replication of the VBA appliance to a DR region so this may not work.

If you do face an issue with the appliance, you can restore it using the Auto-Backup settings. If the region would go down, you can deploy a new one and just attach the storage to it and import the backups to restore from them.

The user guide states this as well as you've quoted. The part on "unpredictable data loss" means that if you use the container on multiple VBA appliances, it could lead to issues however in the case of a DR, the initial one will be gone so this doesn't apply.